23-10-1995 – Text from the booklet
A GROUP THAT CAN SQUEEZE 14 INTERNATIONAL HIT SINGLES – and four new possible ones – into one CD, would be impressive by any standard.
By Swedish standards it means that it’s either ABBA – or Roxette. And since the group is very much alive, there’s really no question about it.
It’s Roxette’s greatest singles. Not all of them, mind you. Just their biggest… so far. Today young Swedish acts swarm around the world’s pop and dance charts, but coming from the land of Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Frida didn’t help much when Roxette cheerfully started their search for World domination in the mid 80’s. As far as pop credentials go, they might as well have been from Latvia or Portugal.
But like their platform wearing predecessors, Roxette showed a generation of young Swedish artists that it actually was possible to break out, to have #1 hits and tour the world – despite the fact that your natural language was suspiciously similar to the Muppet Show’s chef.
In Roxette’s case it was a combination of shrewd talent, determination and, as with their breakthrough hit The Look, pure luck. (If you don’t know that story already, ask your mother).
They started in 1986, rightly assuming that the combination of Per Gessle’s songs and Marie Fredriksson’s voice would take them further than they could go on their own. They nicked their name from a Dr. Feelgood-song and got a job.
Nine years, 36 million albums, 15 million singles, two world tours and numerous “Will they split?” rumours later, Roxette are ready to look back for the first time. As far as the future goes, just listen to these four new songs and judge for yourself.
A hot day in August 1995 Per Gessle & Marie Fredriksson sat down to talk about Roxette’s gallery of hits. Now get to the chorus.
Sven Lindström
01 – June Afternoon
Marie Fredriksson: This is a very Per Gessle-ish song… straight, simple, sunny.
Per Gessle: A summer song, written in the winter. Gessle-ish? Yeah, maybe.
MF: Yes, it’s so much you… perfect for you to sing.
PG: Well, in my little world songs like this have always topped the charts. I’ve sent lots of dead simple songs like this to other artists and they all seem to have problems doing them right, especially if they’ve got big voices – whereas I can get away with it – almost.
MF: Almost always.
PG: You know, our producer Clarence Öfwerman sometimes jokes about my songs being too much ice cream and balloons, too jolly and lightweight – but this is actually the first Roxette song to include both ice cream and balloons in the lyrics. A nice first.
02 – You Don’t Understand Me
PG: Co-written with American songwriter Desmond Child, actually the first song ever to be written with someone from the “outside”. It wasn’t intended to be recorded by Roxette. Desmond came to Halmstad this summer, just to see if we could create something together. He had this idea, I changed it around a bit, and asked Marie to sing on the demo. Then I realized it suited us very well.
MF: You can hear that there are two songwriters working here… it’s like a mix between Europe and the US.
PG: Greenland, almost.
03 – The Look
MF: This is still one of my all time favourites, maybe the best thing we’ve ever done – seven years old and it sticks out as much now as it did then.
PG: Our first American #1 and of course the Big Break. It topped the charts in some 30 countries but at the time I just thought it was a throwaway.
MF: I couldn’t sing it, it suited Per perfectly. But he didn’t believe in himself as a singer in those days.
PG: I always thought that we should promote the songs Marie sang. They were all written for her anyway, but some of them didn’t suit her style. I mean, the whole idea behind Roxette was me writing clever songs and Marie singing like a goddess and together we’d conquer the world. Me being a lead singer wasn’t part of that plan, not for me anyway.
MF: Proves that a great pop song is more about personality and attitude than just singing technically good.
PG: Thank you.
MF: After the first studio playback of The Look I said “here’s our #1 hit in the States”, which was just a wet dream for a Swedish band.
PG: “Walking like a man, hitting like a hammer”… the first two verses are guide lyrics, words just scribbled down to have something to sing. Couldn’t come up with anything better, so we kept them. Everybody gets lucky sometimes…
04 – Dressed For Success
PG: This was the first single off the Look Sharp! album in Sweden, I think this is one of Marie’s best vocal performances ever.
MF: I was so mad when I did it. Everything about that session went wrong, we argued about the arrangement, we changed the key, I was dead tired of the song when I went in to do a guide vocal. Did it in one blast and suddenly realized, “hmm… this is it”.
PG: We were knocked out in the control room. All thumbs up, all differences forgotten and no need at all to mention the war.
MF: In the beginning we used to misunderstand each other quite a lot. Per had all these ideas that he tried to communicate. “No, that’s not the important word, do it more this way”… it could make me really mad sometimes, as in this case.
PG: How to turn anger into hit singles.
05 – Listen To Your Heart
PG: The Big Bad Ballad. This is us trying to recreate that overblown American FM-rock sound to the point where it almost becomes absurd. We really wanted to see how far we could take it.
MF: It sounds a bit dusty today, but it was our second #1 in the US…
PG: … which of course we couldn’t ever dream about since it was more or less made for Sweden. When it hit big in the States we suddenly found ourselves lumped together with bands like Heart and Starship, which wasn’t the intention behind Roxette at all. But we got out of that one… I hope.
MF: The video was great. Shot with an American crew at the Borgholm Castle. The director thought we had built the ruin just for the video.
PG: It took some time to convince them that the place acually was for real.
MF: Today we perform it in a stripped down version, with acoustic guitars. Still love the melody.
06 – Dangerous
PG: This was written just before Roxette’s first tour in 1987. “She’s armed and she’s extremely dangerous” … inspired by an early 70’s action movie. A nice piece of bubblegum.
MF: Hmm…
PG: I know… you never liked it that much. Neither did Don Johnson. He was recording an album at that time, so I sent him Dangerous. He sent it back.
MF: Well, yeah… I like the chorus…
PG: … but as a whole this is probably more my thing. Back to the Balloon Farm again. Ice cream and funny hats.
MF: It was very big in the US, #2 and just a millimeter from Janet Jackson, who was #1.
PG: I didn’t take it personal, Don.
07 – It Must Have Been Love
PG: It must have been lunch, but it’s over now…
MF: This is a fantastic song… I love it… one of the best we’ve ever done… but I like the original title more.
PG: … Christmas For The Broken Hearted… yeah, it was EMI Germany who said they could get us on the radio if we could come up with an intelligent Christmas-single. It was a massive hit in Sweden, but nothing happened elsewhere. It wasn’t even released in Germany, not until the Pretty Woman-soundtrack came out a few years later and the song just exploded everywhere.
MF: Our third #1 in the US… not bad for a song that was lying around, gathering dust. But the video was a weird experience. The director wanted all movements in slow motion, so I had to lip sync the vocals in double speed. My first lesson in how to sing an emotional ballad Mickey Mouse-style. A strange way to make a living.
08 – Joyride
PG: The fourth #1 in America. It all started with a message my girlfriend left on the piano: “Hello, you fool – I love you”. Sounds like a chorus, I thought.
MF: Absolutely wonderful to do live this one.
PG: It’s us doing a Magical Mystery Tour. Got the title from an interview with Paul McCartney, where he said that writing songs with John Lennon was a long joyride.
MF: Once again Per wasn’t sure that this should be the album opener…
PG: … I sang it, you know… but Marie was determined, so she had her way. It turned out to be our biggest album to date, mainly because of this song. So thanks for insisting.
MF: My pleasure.
09 – Fading Like A Flower (Every Time You Leave)
PG: Well, that’s us in those days. A pop tune followed by a power ballad. This was written in a hotel room in Canada late 1989.
MF: It’s probably the most American sounding song we ever did.
PG: A lot of people said we sounded American. I always thought we came more from the English pop tradition. Hard to tell here, though.
MF: A huge hit in Europe and #2 in the US…
PG: … after Eternal Flame by The Bangles, another female dominated American band.
10 – The Big L.
PG: Bubblegum time again, written in the spring of 1990 for the Joyride-album. Big single in Europe, never released in the US.
MF: I was a bit sceptical in the beginning, but then we changed the key in the chorus and there it was.
PG: We arranged it as a kind of dance tune, like Dangerous, using sequensers and so on. Today I would have made it more like She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore – a quick rehearsal, tune up the guitars and go. A garage tune should have a garage sound.
MF: Once again a very Gessle-ish song.
PG: Kinky guitar riff, instant chorus, the sun is out, bring the beer.
11 – Spending My Time
MF: This is a song I always love to perform. I do it without the band, just me by the piano. Bittersweet and melancholic. It holds up very well through the years.
PG: Written the same day as Joyride, would you believe that? I think the lyrics are what really makes this song work. It’s like a day full of thoughts… but I never thought the melody matched the words really. Still I believed this was going to be our biggest hit ever, which might have happened if not our American record company had fired a lot of… ah, never mind. It’s a big song for us, anyway.
MF: It’s got class.
PG: The way Marie sings this song makes me proud of being part of this band.
12 – How Do You Do!
PG: Groovy.
MF: Hmm…
PG: The first single from Tourism, which we recorded during the Join The Joyride World Tour 1991-92. Up to this point our record sales had been almost ridiculous. Eight million Look Sharp!, nine million Pretty Woman, ten million Joyride. It had to come down sooner or later. The idea behind Tourism was to record some new tracks wherever we could book a studio, to benefit from the energy you get in a touring band.
MF: We were back in Europe for stadium concerts in the summer of 1992 and needed a single. One of our weakest, I think.
PG: I like it. It’s about a thousand ideas squeezed into one song. Hard to play live, so we dropped it for a while. Had to get it back in the set, though. Fans started to make flags and posters saying “Why don’t you play How do you do!?” I didn’t mind since Tiny Tim is mentioned in the lyrics…
13 – Almost Unreal
PG: Written for a Bette Midler-movie, but ended up in the Super Mario Bros-flop instead. We thought it was cool to have a song in that movie, because we both liked Dennis Hopper and Bob Hoskins.
MF: But that was before we saw the movie.
PG: I still like the song in a way… but if you wanted to make a parody of Roxette, it would probably sound something like this.
MF: Not one of our most inspired moments.
PG: Right, no big surprises here. Recorded in England and charted best there. That was a bit of a surprise, though.
MF: I was nine months pregnant when I recorded the vocals.
PG: That’s no surprise.
14 – Sleeping In My Car
PG & MF: THIS IS A GREAT SONG!
MF: A step in the right direction. It was just before Christmas ’93 and we were listening to the first playback of the Crash! Boom! Bang!-album and realized we were all missing something. It all sounded so… perfectly grown up.
PG: We had worked for a year, much too long, endless hours of studio time… I mean, I loved it but there was too little P-O-P.
MF: The next day Per was back with this one and suddenly we had something to start off the whole thing, a great first single.
PG: Went straight home, really pissed of, came up with this Neanderthal-riff and wrote it in an hour. We recorded it very fast with different musicians and it was like becoming five years younger again… almost slim… haha.
15 – Crash! Boom! Bang!
PG: Well, for a start everybody said that you can’t have a title like that on a ballad like this.
MF: I just wish I’d written the lyrics myself. This is the moment I wait for in our concerts. I love when the strings come sweeping in…
PG: … Clarence at his best… a bit of Burt Bacharach there, isn’t it? Always something to strive for. Yeah, this one is one of my favourites too. The title’s from Elvis’ Jailhouse Rock, by the way.
16 – Vulnerable
PG: The whole song was written around this wonderful word.
MF: Hard to say for a Swede, though.
PG: Yeah… vlnrbl… vullnr… it’s quite tricky. This was written a week too late for the Joyride-album and it didn’t really suit the Tourism-sessions, so we kept it in the drawer until we started the Crash-project in London. It’s a very dear song to me.
17 – She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
MF: This was actually written a couple of years back and recorded for the Crash!-album, but that version sounded really tired.
PG: A new version was recorded with my former band; Gyllene Tider. We used to knock out power pop tunes like this in our sleep back in 1980-81. This summer we re-united shortly, just for the fun of it, and I was amazed by the energy level we had both live and in the studio.
MF: This is the sound of Halmstad in the summertime.
PG: Yeah, songs like these are the easiest to write, perform and record. I feel totally at home here, it’s where I come from really.
18 – I Don’t Want To Get Hurt
MF: A new song that explains why it’s so inspiring to work with Per… it just goes straight into my heart.
PG: A nice contrast to She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Wonderful string arrangement from Clarence again… almost the same vibe as in Vulnerable or It Must Have Been Love, but 1995. I really don’t know where we would have been without his input in songs like this. Not here anyway. Cheers.
LISTEN TO THE COMPILATION ALBUM HERE!
As Per informed in a recent interview, the album gets a double vinyl release in November 2025.
Photos by Jonas Linell
